The present invention, in certain respects, relates to manufacturing defects in a microprocessor-based system. In other respects, the present invention relates to a method of diagnosing and isolating microprocessor circuitry problems.
As electronic components are designed smaller and smaller, these components include multiple leads having tighter pitches, which in turn leads to more manufacturing defects in the components. In a microprocessor-based system, it is necessary to rely on the processor and its associated components to work properly. When such a system is able to boot, i.e., to load an operating system into the system""s main memory or random access memory, a diagnostic program can be run to isolate any problems. However, the ability to run the diagnostic program is dependent upon the system being able to boot. If the system cannot boot, then a troubleshooter, e.g., a technician, must go through the painstaking task of determining the source of the boot failure.